Real Estate/Construction

A 28-page opinion issued from the Indiana Court of Appeals on April 22 on the state’s Right to Farm Act is being hailed as the best of rulings and the worst of rulings. The case may be appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court.

Attorney Rick Hofstetter has devoted the last 20 years of his life to the bucolic Brown County hamlet of Story, restoring and preserving the historic community after buying it at a sheriff's sale. Now he says it's time for the town to become someone else's Story.

The 7th Circuit both rejected proposed class action lawsuit against the website Zillow, but Realtors and real estate attorneys still have concerns about whether its “Zestimates” are unnecessarily misleading. Zillow, however, insists its estimation practices are transparent and legal, thus making their home valuations a beneficial tool for buyers and sellers.

A bill that passed through the Indiana House 82-14 and is now in the Senate would protect families from predatory land contracts. Provisions would require buyers be told the value of the property and how much they will ultimately pay for it if they complete the terms of the agreement, among other protections.

ARTICLES

A dispute between two neighbors concerning who was permitted use a gravel driveway splitting their properties ended in favor of a woman who argued she paid taxes and had been using the entry for more than 20 years before her neighbors showed up.

A disagreement between two siblings has been squashed now that an appellate court has sided with a woman who was granted last-minute possession of her mother’s estate just days before her death, canceling a former transfer on death deed shared with her brother.

In the curriculum for business ethics that I teach to students at Butler University’s Lacy School of Business, we cover John Locke and his notion of private property rights – natural rights that existed for each individual in the state of nature. Locke contended that men left that state of nature, in part, because the challenge of enforcing those rights led to a state of war. In more than 30 years of real estate litigation practice, I have seen what often looks like that state of war play out between litigants.

A long-running legal battle over a deteriorating east side Indianapolis housing complex has once again led to legal defeat for the city, with the Indiana Court of Appeals on Tuesday upholding the appointment of a receiver over the city-owned properties.

On a vacant plot along Main Street across from the federal courthouse in South Bend, Barnes & Thornburg leaders grabbed their shovels Tuesday and helped break ground on a new office building that is not only on the first new construction within the downtown business core in 20 years, but which also will carry the law firm’s moniker.